Memo on the Topic and Purpose of the Research

            This week, when I was thinking about the purpose statement for my research, I came across the Cooperative Institutional Research Program Survey (2011), which made me narrow down the topic of my study. According to the survey, today’s first-year college students experience record-high levels of anxiety and nervous tension. However, female students were about 12% more likely to report low levels of emotional health than male students. This helped me decide to focus on studying academic stress among female first-year students rather than on first-year undergraduate students in general. Thus, the research would contribute to further study of emotional health in women.

            After I revised the topic (Academic Stress among American Female First-Year Undergraduate Students), I reread my Researcher Identity Memo several times and came to a decision that valid evaluation of the University's need for including stress-management course in the undergraduate curriculum based on exclusively females' perceptions would be impossible. Such evaluation requires examining the perceptions of both sexes.

            I feel it would be more relevant to the research to explore how academic pressures affect female students' social lives within the campus community. I have two reasons to believe so: Firstly, there is not enough literature on this subject. Secondly, it would provide a better understanding of female nature. Therefore, taking these relevancies into account, I believe the topic of the research should be Academic Stress among American Female First-Year Undergraduate Students and Its Effect on Their Social Lives.

             Through my research I will explore the connection between classroom practices at the University of Hawaii, stress among its female first-year undergraduate students, and the impact of academic stress on the students' social behavior within the university community. I seek to understand what role classroom practices play in the occurrence of stress in the female students.  Further, I hope to illuminate how academic stress affects their life-style choices and participation in community life.